John Keats`s Early Poems, 1814-1817

“John Keats’s Early Poems, 1814-1817”
An Academic Seminar organized by the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association and the Keats
Foundation, and supported by the British School at Rome
31 October 2014 at the KEATS-SHELLEY HOUSE, Rome
To mark the bicentenary of the composition of ‘Imitation of Spenser’ (1814), Keats’s earliest
known poem, the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association and the Keats Foundation are hosting an
academic seminar on 31 October, Keats’s birthday, at the Keats-Shelley House in Rome.
The programme for the afternoon’s activities is as follows:
14.00
Registration (Tea and coffee served)
14.30
Welcome and introductory tour of the collection
Dr Giuseppe Albano, Curator, Keats-Shelley House
14.45
Keynote lecture: Keats. The Young Poet as Hero: Life as a Poetic
Pilgrimage
Professor Nadia Fusini, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy
15.30
Seeing through the “Burden of the Past”: Superior Belatedness in Keats’s
Early Sonnets
Dr Derek Lowe, University of South Alabama, USA
16.00
Tea, coffee and biscuits served on the Terrace (weather permitting) or in
the gift shop and film room area
16.30
Keats’s Early Poetic Project: Solipsistic or Not?
Loredana Mihani, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
17.00
Keats’s Epistles and His Claims for a Poetic Career
Dr Martin P. McNamee, Meredith College, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
17.30
“I Must Tell a Tale of Chivalry”: Keats’s Early Reading of Spenser in
‘Specimen of an Introduction to a Poem’
Chiara Moriconi, University of Rome, ‘La Sapienza’, Italy
18.00
Closing words and prosecco reception
Biographical Notes on Speakers
Nadia Fusini is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Italian Institute of Human Sciences
(SUM) in Florence. She previously taught Shakespearean Criticism and Philology at the Sapienza
Università di Roma for many years.
She has translated and commented upon many writers, including Virginia Woolf (Premio
Mondello 1995 for her translation of The Waves), John Keats, William Shakespeare, Samuel
Beckett, Mary Shelley, Wallace Stevens (Achille Marazza Award 1996 for her translation of The
Auroras of Autumn).
Among her most significant studies are particularly noteworthy: Opere (Meridiani Mondadori
1999) and Possiedo la mia anima. Il segreto di Virginia Woolf, Mondadori 2006 (translated into
many languages), both devoted to Virginia Woolf; and Di vita si muore. Lo spettacolo delle
passioni in Shakespeare (Mondadori, 2010), devoted to Shakespeare (Premio Napoli 2011).
Nadia Fusini has published extensively on the topic of female identity: La Luminosa. Genealogia
di Fedra (Feltrinelli 1988); Uomini e donne. Una fratellanza inquieta (Donzelli, 1995); Nomi, dieci
scritture femminili (Donzelli 1996); Donne fatali. Ofelia, Desdemona, Cleopatra (Bulzoni 2005).
Her successful narrative production includes: La Bocca più di tutto mi piaceva (Donzelli 1996 e
Mondadori 2004); Lo specchio di Elisabetta (Mondadori 2004), L’ amore necessario (Mondadori
2008); La figlia del sole, vita ardente di Katherine Mansfield (Mondadori, 2012).
Her latest book is Hannah e le altre (Einaudi, 2013).
Derek Lowe received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in 2000. He has taught
courses in Romanticism and 18th-Century Literature at UC Irvine, Louisiana Tech University, and
the University of South Alabama. He has long been interested in poetic authority and in the
poetic relationship between Wordsworth and Keats, and he published a piece on these
intertwined topics in the Keats-Shelley Journal in 2008.
He is currently working on eighteenth-century concepts of copyright and literary property and
their impact on Romantic-period practices. He recently presented on this subject at the NASSR
"Romantic Organizations" conference this past summer, and now has an article on this topic
under review with Studies in Romanticism.
Martin P. McNamee is Assistant Professor of English and the Director of Professional Writing at
Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was educated at the University of Scranton
(A.B.) and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received the M. A. and
Ph.D. degrees. He held the Danforth Graduate Fellowship while at Carolina.
His current research is focused on John Keats’s Poems and considers how Keats's selection and
arrangement of the poems influence the artistic effect of his first volume.
Loredana Mihani is an English Literature senior at John Cabot University in Rome. A native of
Albania, she is also fluent in English and Italian. She received the 2012 International
Abercrombie & Fitch Diversity Award. In 2013, her essay ranked Finalist in Ayn Rand’s contest
Atlas Shrugged. She also likes to translate. Forthcoming is the In Verse Anthology by John Cabot
University Press, which will contain some poems that she has translated from Italian into
English.
Chiara Moriconi is a PhD candidate at La Sapienza Università di Roma. She is working on a
project about Romance revisionism in the narrative poetry of John Keats, with a particular focus
on Spenser’s influence on the Romantic poet. Her area of expertise includes Victorian studies
on poetry and prose. She has published essays on Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s double works of art
and their connection to the theories of intersemiotic translation.